Electrically powered artificial lighting has become ubiquitous in modern society. Electrical lighting devices are commonly deployed, for example, in homes, buildings of commercial and other enterprise establishments, as well as in various outdoor settings.
In conventional lighting devices, the luminance output can be turned ON/OFF and often can be adjusted up or dimmed down. In some devices, e.g. using multiple colors of light emitting diode (LED) type sources, the user may be able to adjust a combined color output of the resulting illumination. The changes in intensity or color characteristics of the illumination may be responsive to manual user inputs or responsive to various sensed conditions in or about the illuminated space.
There have been proposals to use displays or display-like devices mounted in or on the ceiling to provide lighting. The Fraunhofer Institute, for example, has demonstrated a lighting system using luminous tiles, each having a matrix of red (R) LEDs, green (G), blue (B) LEDs and white (W) LEDs as well as a diffuser film to process light from the various LEDs. The LEDs of the system were driven to simulate or mimic the effects of clouds moving across the sky. Although use of displays allows for variations in appearance that some may find pleasing, the displays or display-like devices are optimized for image output and do not provide particularly good illumination for general lighting applications. Liquid crystal displays (LCD) also are rather inefficient and thus not readily adaptable to artificial illumination applications. Even if display or display like devices may be adapted in some fashion for use as artificial illumination, operating such a device to provide a display capability and associated general lighting performance may place high demands on the data processing capabilities of the device. As the resolution of the device increases, the data processing demands increase and there is room for further improvement in the processor architecture and operations in increasingly sophisticated luminaries.